Beer COOLERS, Plastic
BAGS,
AND THE SCIENCE OF SOUS-VIDEThere’s been a small revolution going on in restaurant
kitchens since the early 2000s. It’s changed everything from
the way line cooks cook and chefs conceive dishes and
menus to the way fast food chains maintain consistency and
organize their workflow. I’m talking sous-vide, from the
French for “under vacuum,” the cooking method wherein
food is placed in a vacuum-sealed pouch and cooked in a
temperature-controlled water bath. The technique was first
introduced to the public in the 1970s at Michel Troisgros’
eponymous restaurant in Roanne, France, but it wasn’t until
early in this century, when chefs gained access to very
precise, laboratory-grade equipment that it became both
practical and possible to implement on a large scale.
You may be thinking: “OK, interesting, but I’m a home
cook, and I couldn’t tell a water circulator from a rotary
evaporator—what’s this got to do with me?” You’ll just
have to trust that I’ll get there in a moment.
According to famed British chef Heston Blumenthal of
The Fat Duck, outside London, “Sous-vide cooking is the
single greatest advancement in cooking technology in
decades,” and he’s not the only one who thinks so.
Everyone from Thomas Keller of New York’s Per Se and
California’s The French Laundry to your local Chipotle